Crawley Amateur Radio Club

With the upcoming and much anticipated 3YØK DXpedition to Bouvet Island due to start very soon (weather conditions depending), I thought it would be good time to go through the concept of working 'Split' Operating 'Split' is something which understandably confuses many amateur radio operators who are new to the hobby. It's mainly used when stations are expecting large pile-ups, and you are likely to hear something like 'Listening Up 5'.  Why is it used, and how is it used? Before you start, it's really important to listen to the station before pressing that PTT button. Listen to a few QSOs and be clear what frequencies are being used for the split. Unfortunately it's often the case that experienced ham radio operators who should know better, don't listen first.  Instead they end up annoying other operators. When is it used? Operating Split is commonly used during DX (long-distance) communications to manage large numbers of calling stations and re...

We all know about FT8 and FT4, but now we have FT2! Developed by Martino (IU8LMC), this new mode has transmission cycles of just 3.8 seconds. The result is a complete QSO in 7-11 seconds, compared to the full minute required in FT8. A BETA version of the software is available at https://www.ft2.it/   Our friends at Mid Sussex Amateur Radio Society have also written a great article on getting started with this new mode - https://midsussexars.org.uk/news/518-adventures-in-ft2-with-decodium-3 Have you tried FT2?  If so, how did you get on with it, and what was your first contact?  Do write in the comments, and let us know.

Not amateur radio but club members have an eclectic mix of interests which include general engineering, military history and aircraft amongst other things. In that light I thought that I would share two books that I have just finished reading. The first is Hurricats by Ralph Barker. The book was a serendipitous find in a second hand book shop in Stow on the Wold, the UK capital of used book stores. This book details the story of the hurricanes that were used for convoy protection during WW2. These aircraft were considered disposable in that they could not land back on the ship that launched them, and it was considered by may to be a suicide mission by the pilot. The truth is that by no means all the aircraft launched were lost and the majority of the pilots survived. The story starts in August 1940 when the German Airforce converted the Focke-Wulf FW 200 Condor to an anti-shipping aircraft to attack allied conveys. This caused alarm in the Admiralty because the allies had no effective ...